Card players commonly use their hands to support their cards during play. Because some card games involve the contemporaneous need to view up to 17-20 cards at a time, it can be cumbersome to hold the cards in the hands without letting your opponent see some of the cards. When a player needs to view so many cards at once, they are commonly arrange in linear fashion, with each successive card being offset behind an adjacent card. The cards are also held close to the chest so that opposing players cannot see them. Strategic planning and thinking, however, is less than ideal for this manual arrangement of cards, and the hands can easily cramp and can become painful from fatigue, particularly when the game lasts a long time.
Another game that requires a need to view many game pieces at once is dominos. Like a card game, dominos also involves strategic planning and thinking to prevail over your opponent. Unlike cards, however, the dominos are often supported on the table in front of the player rather than being held in the hands. Quite often the organization of dominos is difficult, particularly when a player has to view many pieces at once. Domino pieces also are susceptible to becoming scattered during play from accidental movements of the table and from the players' hands and arms.
To overcome the deficiencies of using the hands or table surface to support cards or dominos, innovators have developed card boards and domino boards to support these gaming items in a stable manner for contemporaneous viewing. The card boards typically have included a set of thin slots on one side of the board. The cards are placed in the slots and rest in an inclined position facing the player. Card boards have been on the market for at least about 10 years.
The domino game boards also have included a plurality of slots, but the slots are wider to accommodate the greater thickness of dominos. Although known game boards have been beneficial in that they provide players with an alternative method of supporting gaming pieces, they do present drawbacks. Firstly, the same game boards cannot be used for playing both dominos and cards. Players must keep and locate separate game boards for each game. Further, if card slots are disposed on one side of the game board and domino slots are located on the other side, so that the same board can be used for either game, the combination card/domino board is nonetheless problematic to players because each side of the board contains grooves, which precludes the use of a stabilizing (i.e., anti-marring, or friction producing) surface on either side of the board. In addition, the card slots in known gaming boards are very thin, and therefore require precision when placing the cards in the slot. If a player is rushed or is not careful when inserting the card into the slot, the player risks missing the slot and having the card fall to the surface of the playing table where it can be readily seen by opposing players. Location of the card slot is particularly troublesome to the elderly whose eyesight and manual dexterity may have deteriorated. Thus, although known game boards have been able to support either playing cards or dominos, they have nonetheless presented drawbacks that can disrupt the enjoyment and cadence of the game.